New things in lit from James Smythe, Clancy Sigal, Curtis White and Karl Ove Knausgaard

Clinic and Stop Sharpening Your Knives are two of the best poetry publications knocking around at the moment – slick and inspired but uncontrived, with contributions from all over the shop. Clinic III and S/S/Y/K 5 are both imminent as I write this, with work from some of the most interesting poets you’ve never heard of. And some you have.

LITERARY BOOK OF THE WEEK: Hemingway Lives! – Clancy Sigal [OR Books]

The poet Wallace Stevens once punched Ernest Hemingway in the face and, so the story goes, broke his hand on Hem’s mighty jaw. If that’s not a case for ‘Why reading Ernest Hemingway matters today’ then I really don’t know what is, but Sigal’s book has a few other reasons if you still need them. This one’s a must have for fans of shagging, fighting and literature. And fans of shagging, fighting literature.

SCIENCE BOOK OF THE WEEK: The Science Delusion – Curtis White [Melville House]

Yeah, okay, it’s not “really” a science book. (Despite the title, it’s also not a twatty Dawkins-esque polemic, either.) It’s a book that wanders, sometimes aimlessly, between science and philosophy. Where science now seems to rule absolute, White proposes open debate and free thought. I don’t really see how that can be a bad thing.

SCI-FI BOOK OF THE WEEK: The Machine – James Smythe [Blue Door]

Billing a book as a ‘Frankenstein for the 21st Century’ is a big shout. Not least of all because Shelley’s haunting masterpiece is as relevant today as it was almost 200 years ago. (Death, women’s rights, all that jazz – still kicking around, I think.) Smythe has a good crack at it though and, with his particular flair for speculative fiction, cooks up something pretty extraordinary that even Walter White would envy.

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a peculiar sensation: more people seem to have read part one of his “My Struggle” series (thumbs up to whoever okay’d that, by the way), A Death in the Family, than have actually read any of his other work. For a dyed-in-the-wool literary autobiography of a character no one really knows, that’s pretty rare. But Knaus is a magician of the mundane, and the story of his curious love/hate relationship with writing, continued in the second installment, is more interesting than most novels you’ll read this year. Ego-driven? Yes. Self-absorbed? Completely. Narcissistic? Totally. But it’s fucking brilliant.

If you don’t like bugs then this probably isn’t for you. If you do, then you’ve hit the jizzing jackpot, mate. Insect Theatre is a real spectacle; some brilliant macro photography and a great piece of writing that really sheds a new light on the peculiar majesty of that thing you’re about to tread on. Right now. STOP!

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is probably, nay definitely, one of the most iconic films of all time. It set a precedent for late twentieth century cinematography and portrayal of psychopathy. Yeah, this book’s got all the bits you know, but it also has a bunch of never-before-seen images that take you a whole lot further down the rabbit hole. If that’s somewhere you want to go. “I have to clean the cum off the back seat. Some nights, I clean off the blood” – hallmark of a good weekend, I reckon.